Another nail in the coffin

The White House Correspondents’ Association’s Dinner is completely stupid. It’s yet another example that our press has become another special interest group. I’m tired of watching our presidents yuck it up and pander to a bunch of “journalists”, I’m tired of the second-rate entertainers from Hollywood, I’m tired of the massive parties organized around it.

It’s a joke.

I imagine many people’s lives are like mine. You wake up around 5am, get your kids up and dressed (“It puts it’s shirt in the laundry basket or it gets the hose!”), fed your two stupid chocolate labs (AKA: The Frat Boys), pack lunches, forget to make coffee, drop the kids off at grandmas, and drive to work while cursing the gods because nobody plays any good songs in the morning. I need some metal to wake me up damnit, I don’t need to hear bullshit Aerosmith love songs when I’m all bleary eyed. In fact I never need to hear any Aerosmith songs.

Once at work you check your phone messages in which you get called a racist or get told how to do your job, you check your emails which all want something from you and offer nothing in return. You look at your desk and decide which stack is gonna get your attention today. You wait with bated breath to see whose going to call in sick or no-show, so you know what you can get done today (Hey it’s like raiding!), and you check your guild website to see if there’s been anything posted since last night. You check and see how the Red Wings are doing, then you start logging yesterdays paperwork for the day.

Your employees come in and you yell at the guy whose late. Your not really mad at him, but your pissed that you lost 2 people to Sindragosa’s AOE blast each attempt the night before. (You have a right to be pissed, goddamn keyboard turners.) You get your people going and hand out their paperwork, chide them for not filling out yesterday’s out properly, and then you wander back to your office to steal a cup of coffee from another supervisor and check your WoL reports from last nights raid.

During your day, you say “fuck” about 120 times. You help out little shriveled up old men named “Whitey” (whose black LOL) and you listen to his WWII stories (Anyone whose served deserves to be listened to IMO), you get your Director the figures he wants cus he’s got a meeting with the Mayor, you promise an employee if he pees on the job site again you will fire him, while his dick is still in his hand. You buy another crew coffee because they went above and beyond the day before (secret: You don’t drink it with them. You are rewarding them, not being their buddy). That reminds me of a saying my father had when it came to his employees. “I don’t give a shit if you like me. Liking turns to loving, loving turns to fucking, and I’ll be damned if I fuck any of you guys.” Thanks Dad. I was like six when you taught me that.

You head out into the city to check on your people, check address, talk to the public and further curse DJ’s who talk more than they play music. By the time lunch rolls around you’ve had 4 mowers break down, projecting to cost you over $600 dollars in repairs and your losing $140 per hour for each mower being down, not to mention diminishing returns on employee costs as you find other work for them. You sneak home to grab a sandwich and share half of it with your daughter whose just come home from pre-school and thinks your food tastes so much better than hers.

You grab a soda from the fridge and something sweet you shouldn’t eat because A. Your fat. B. Your going to end up going blind or losing a foot. And you head back to the job sites to make sure your people are doing their job and aren’t late getting back from lunch. Then you head into whatever meetings you’ve got, then it’s back to the desk to do paperwork, talk to guildies via text message, and head back out into the city to put out whatever brush fires just pulled you away from your paperwork. You round out the day going over your people’s completed paperwork and start drawing up in your head tomorrow’s work assignments.

Once the equipment is secure, people are punched out, you bullshit with your fellow supervisors for 30 minutes going over things from how to manipulate the system so your department can actually function, to which City Councilman is screwing his neighbor, to telling old rehashed stories from back in the day.

Then you lock up and head home. When you walk into your house, you’ve got two wonderful children who are waiting to destroy any hopes you had of being left alone and a wife whose trying to clean (Secret: I do housework also so I don’t think it’s a “woman’s responsibility”, but God do I wish I married a woman who thought it was her sacred duty to serve me. Someone remind me why I married an independent woman?).

You send your eldest son to the kitchen to bring you a beer and a salt shaker, you marvel in his training when he brings back a bottle opener also, and you sit there on the couch with both of them and ask them how school was. Somedays your wife cooks, somedays you cook, somedays you say screw it and you go out to dinner (If she has her “face” on.)

You do the homework thing, get the kids in the tub, then tuck them off into bed by 7:30pm FIRM. Srs. My kids are up by 5am. They have a firm bedtime except on special nights. After 7:30 you and the misses share a few laughs, but because she’s like you, she needs her own space by herself so she goes off to read, scrapbook, stare at bullshit “reality” shows on TV and you wait for 8:15 to roll around if it’s a raid night.

Coffee in hand you log in at 8:15 on the dot because you are a Grade A, well oiled machine and start sending out invites for your raid. You handle your stuff, have fun, then log by 11:30. You debate shaving before your shower or having a wank in it. Then you brush your teeth and head to bed to cop a feel on a boob.

5am your alarm clock goes off.

Last night. I dropped out of raid leading. Done. It just doesn’t fit my lifestyle anymore. I don’t like feeling that twice a week I HAVE to be somewhere at a certain time. If I was just one of the guys in the raid it would be different, but because I’m the guy putting it together and running it I can’t just no-show.

The GM didn’t bug me (I’m a lucky raid leader. She sits back and lets me be for the most part), the players don’t bother me (even their annoying parts), the stress doesn’t bother me, WoW doesn’t interfere with my responsibilities as a father or husband.

I just don’t want to “have” to be somewhere.

I didn’t do the farewell martyr post. I didn’t do the “advice” post to my replacement. I just notified my GM after the raid and that was that.

I’m not quitting WoW yet, I’m not quitting raiding yet, I just don’t want to be the guy with 100% attendance anymore. I may focus on other characters, I may work on my healing, I may just start from scratch somewhere completely random.

Raid leading is something that I have enjoyed immensely. I learned a lot from it and it’s got some excellent real world applications (I can taunt an angry Director off someone like nobody’s business). I did a good job of it and came to understand it’s nuances. When I took the job I thought it was all about “strategy”, but I came to realize that’s the smallest part of it.

It’s really about people.

Now comes the part where I find out if I can be “just one of the guys”.

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3 Responses

I was the raid leader, then I was the guild leader, then I told them all to stick it and left the guild to begin a marvelous wandering time of doing my own thing and being beholden to nobody which inevitably bored me shitless so I’m back in a guild again and slowly becoming the ‘go-to’ guy to make things happen.